Stories we read this fall

December 10, 2014 • Dana Wagner

In the first edition of this blog, Stories we read this summer, we focused on articles that made human sense of refugee crises of incomprehensible scale. This time around, we do the same but add a dose of opinion.

The world’s worst refugee emergency since the Second World War continues to emanate from Syria and neighbouring Iraq. The revised estimate of refugees generated since the 2011 start of civil war in Syria is 3.8 million.

Not everyone needs to be resettled in a new home outside the region, but many do. Many more than the roughly 43,500 people who have so far been accepted for resettlement worldwide.

In the meantime, people are eking out a living mostly in overfull and resource-stretched countries in the region. Others are making dangerous and costly trips farther afield like across the Mediterranean.